The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EDUCATION / EUROPEAN
But why send an American youth to Europe for education? What are the
objects of an useful American education? Classical knowledge, modern
languages, chiefly French, Spanish, and Italian; Mathematics, Natural
philosophy, Natural history, Civil history, and Ethics. In Natural
philosophy, I mean to include Chemistry and Agriculture, and in
Natural history, to include Botany, as well as the other branches of
those departments. It is true that the habit of speaking the modern
languages cannot be so well acquired in America; but every other
article can be as well acquired at William and Mary college, as at any
place in Europe. When college education is done with, and a young man
is to prepare himself for public life, he must cast his eyes (for
America) either on Law or Physics. For the former, where can he apply
so advantageously as to Mr. Wythe? For the latter, he must come to
Europe: the medical class of students, therefore, is the only one
which need come to Europe.
Let us view the disadvantages of sending a youth td Europe. To
enumerate them all, would require a volume. I will select a few. If he
goes to England, he learns drinking, horse racing, and boxing. These
are the peculiarities of English education. The following
circumstances are common to education in that, and the other countries
of Europe. He acquires a fondness for European luxury and dissipation,
and a contempt for the simplicity of his own country; he is fascinated
with the privileges of the European aristocrats, and sees, with
abhorrence, the lovuiy equality which the poor enjoy with the rich, in
his own country; he contracts a partiality for aristocracy or
monarchy; he forms foreign friendships which will never be useful to
him, and loses the seasons of life for forming, in his own country,
those friendships which, of all others, are the most faithful and
permanent; he is led, by the strongest of all the human passions, into
a spirit for female intrigue, destructive of his own and others'
happiness, or a passion for whores, destructive of his health, and, in
both cases, learns to consider fidelity to the marriage bed as an
ungentlemanly practice, and inconsistent with happiness; he recollects
the voluptuary dress and arts of the European women, and pities and
despises the chaste affections and simplicity of those of his own
country; he retains, through life, a fond recollection, and a
hankering after those places, which were the scenes of his first
pleasures and of his first connections; he returns to his own country,
a foreigner, unacquainted with the practices of domestic economy,
necessary to preserve him from ruin, speaking and writing his native
tongue as a foreigner, and therefore unqualified to obtain those
distinctions, which eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures in a free
country; for I would observe to you, that what is called style in
writing or speaking is formed very early in life, while the
imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent. I am of opinion,
that there never was an instance of a man's writing or speaking his
native tongue with elegance, who passed from fifteen to twenty years
of age out of the country where it was spoken. Thus, no instance
exists of a person's writing two languages perfectly. That will always
appear to be his native language, which was most familiar t6 him in
his youth.
It appears to me, then, that an American, coming to Europe for
education, loses in his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, in
his habits, and in his happiness. I had entertained only doubts on
this head before I came to Europe: what I see and hear, since I came
here, proves more than I had even suspected. Cast your eye over
America: who are the men of most learning, of roost eloquence, most
beloved by their countrymen and most trusted and promoted by them?
They are those who have been educated among them, and whose manners,
morals, and habits, are perfectly homogeneous with those of the
country.
to J. Bannister, 15 October 1785
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